
The mountains are peaks of majesty and beauty. Note: For more info on the writing of The Maze, see the Author's Note at the end of the book.From Dove Creek, the white-capped mountains can be seen, standing sentinel over rolling sage covered land, with ancient cedar and pinon hills, farmland, and canyons. He also told me about a great video that has all kinds of hang gliding action, with lots of footage filmed from cameras right over the pilots' shoulders. He spotted a place where I had Rick pulling on the control bar when he should have been pushing, so I fixed it. After I'd written the story, I showed him all the parts that have hang gliding in them so he could check that they were correct. My friend talked me through what he was doing as he was flying the hang glider, how he finds and uses thermals and so on. Driving his truck, I was in radio contact when he was at 15,000 feet.

I got to watch them assemble their hang gliders and run off the cliffs. I asked him if I could hang out with him and his buddies when they went flying. I wish! Maybe in another lifetime! I have a friend, though, who's been a hang glider pilot for over twenty years. Lon Peregrino would be in the position to teach Rick to fly. The condor biologist Rick meets will be a hang glider pilot, which makes sense-he'd be a man who liked birds so much, he wanted to fly like one. Icarus flew a prehistoric hang glider and Rick Walker would fly a modern one. The last ten miles was so rough it took us five and a half hours!ĭid your idea of Rick flying the hang glider come from Icarus?Įxactly. The four-wheel-drive “road” to get there (see photo) was fifty miles long. Its landscapes suggested all sorts of possibilities for the story. We spent four days hiking in the Maze, for the fun of it and so I'd be able to write the descriptions. When my publisher designed the cover for the paperback, they wrote, “When your life is a maze, you need wings.” Perfect. My main character could be a boy in a lot of trouble, who considers his whole life to be nothing but dead ends-a maze. The Maze is the most remote part of Canyonlands, and would be a spectacular setting for a book. The labyrinth reminded me of the Maze, about 150 miles up the Colorado River from Vermilion Cliffs. Icarus flew out of an elaborate puzzle-prison called the labyrinth, on wings his father had fashioned for them both. This brought to mind Icarus, from Greek mythology.

My main character could be a boy who has flying dreams. I kept remembering the flying dreams I'd had when I was a kid. Why did you choose the Maze in Canyonlands National Park for the setting of your story?Ī lot of my story ideas come from making associations as I'm daydreaming. Imagine, a wingspan nearly ten feet across! I knew that my readers would be fascinated with this magnificent soaring bird. On my way home I was already thinking I should write a story in which a kid gets involved with the condors. The biologists on site told us that they would be posting their field notes about the birds on their Web site. It was a thrill to watch the huge young condors in flight. The idea of seeing “nature's most magnificent flying machine” in the wild was so exciting, we drove right down there. I was fascinated-I knew that the last wild condors had been captured and were part of a captive breeding program. In December of 1996, my wife and I read that six young California condors had just been released at the Vermilion Cliffs, close to where we begin our Grand Canyon river trips. What got you started on this one? The boy in trouble? The condors? The Maze in Canyonlands National Park? The hang gliding?
